Third World House, Oberlin OH

I was visiting Cindy at Asia House and we were talking by candlelight. A huge moth came fluttering in, attracted to the light, and we watched it as it dove into the flames and fluttered to the tabletop with singed wings. It would bat its wings like it was writhing in pain and the moment it was able to get airborne, it would plunge into the flame again, sometimes splashing a drop of wax, sometimes falling to the tabletop, sometimes being able to keep flight only to make another pass. Cindy and I just watched. Eventually it burned itself to death and lay limp at the candle base. Suicide by blind attraction. What was its secret, the secret it was hiding?

We don’t care what the light does to us with our single-minded goal to be closer and ever so closer to the light. No attention to wings being seared and singed; we are moths, not wings. We know exactly what we do because we just do it; the purest of doings. Death throes of ultimate ecstasy. Purification. Or enlightenment. So to speak.